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during three months. By a systematic mass massacre of our comrades, the butchers' Government seemed as if it were desirous of proving by moving evidence to the workers of all lands what relentless vengeance they, the workers, bring upon themselves if they do not from the moment they arrive in power subject the bourgeoisie of their country to an iron dictatorship, instead of remaining animated, as was the revolutionary Government in Finland, by such delicate feelings of humanity towards their class enemies. Not content with mass shootings, the bourgeoisie immediately set about starving their prisoners to death. Evidently this is the favourite form of vengeance for the clerical-monarchic-capitalist joint stock society! When the workers, feeling themselves proudly to be the true proprietors and creators of all wealth, are writhing in the pangs of hunger and dying one after the other, then it is that the tine shareholder enjoys such a sight all the more, whets his appetite with it, and feels what superhuman power is his! Like all scoundrels he relishes it so much as to forget that the labour-power of the worker is necessary to him, until some private capitalist, like Baron Linder in this case, aroused from his intoxicating joy by the view of depopulated fields and factories, gives utterance to the truth that "this is shameful," and exhorts his boon companions in Svinhufoud's camp to exercise more moderation in their revenge.
The capitalists' paradise was now well nigh complete. The golden crown alone was lacking. But it was soon ordered—vulgar work from the Hohenzollern branch in Hesse, and modelled on Master William's designs. On the eve of the day when the bourgeois Diet was to elect its king, the Nemesis of History raised a warning finger, and in Bulgaria and on the French front there sounded the fateful funeral knell of German imperialism.
The mad masters of Finland did not yet understand the importance of retreating. They wished to run full tilt with their horns against the wall. Soon we shall see them cringing and fawning before English imperialism—until such time as the workers shall make short shrift of the English brigand too.
The workers' movement in Finland was broken last spring, and will not be reborn in its primitive form. The axe without an edge was cast into the furnace of history—to be re-smelted, and soon we shall see it emerge pure communist
